In the middle of the eighteenth century Thursdays were red-letter days for the residents of the Quaker town of Philadelphia. On that day Thomas Bradford sent forth from the “Sign of the Bible” in Second Street the weekly number of the “Pennsylvania Journal,” and upon the same day his rival journalists, Franklin and Hall, issued the “Pennsylvania Gazette.”

On Thursday, the fifteenth of November, seventeen hundred and fifty, Old Style, the good people of the town took up their newspapers with doubtless a feeling of comfortable anticipation, as they drew their chairs to the fireside and began to look over the local occurrences of the past week, the “freshest foreign advices,” and the various bits of information that had filtered slowly from the northern and more southern provinces.

On this particular evening the subscribers to both newspapers found a trifle more news in the “Journal,” but in each paper the same domestic items of interest, somewhat differently worded. The latest news from Boston was that of November fifth, from New York, November eighth, the Annapolis item was dated October tenth, and the few lines from London had been written in August.

The “Gazette” (a larger sheet than the “Journal”) occasionally had upon its first page some timely article of political or local interest. But more frequently there appeared in its first column an effusion of no local color, but full of sentimental or moral reflections. In this day’s issue there was a long letter, dated New York, from one who claimed to be “Beauty’s Votary.” This expressed the writer’s disappointment that an interesting “Piece” inserted in the “Gazette” a fortnight earlier had presented in its conclusion “an unexpected shocking Image.” The shock to the writer it appears was the greater, because the beginning of the article had, he thought, promised a strong contrast between “Furious Rage in our rough Sex, and Gentle mildness adorn’d with Beauty’s charms in the other.” The rest of the letter was an apostrophe to the fair sex in the sentimental and florid language of the period.

To the women, we imagine, this letter was more acceptable than to the men, who found the shipping news more to their taste, and noted with pleasure the arrival of the ship Carolina and the Snow Strong, which brought cargoes valuable for their various industries.

Advertisements filled a number of columns. Among them was one so novel in its character that it must have caught the eye of all readers. The middle column on the second page was devoted almost entirely to an announcement that John Newbery had for “Sale to Schoolmasters, Shopkeepers, &c., who buy in quantities to sell again,” “The Museum,” “A new French Primer,” “The Royal Battledore,” and “The Pretty Book for Children.” This notice—a reduced fac-simile of which is given—made Newbery’s dÉbut in Philadelphia; and it must not be forgotten that but a short period had elapsed since his first book had been printed in England.

John Newbery’s Advertisement of Children’s Books

Franklin had doubtless heard of the publisher in St. Paul’s Churchyard through Mr. Strahan, his correspondent, who filled orders for him from London booksellers; but the omission of the customary announcement of special books as “to be had of the Printer hereof” points to Newbery’s enterprise in seeking a wider market for his wares, and Franklin’s business ability in securing the advertisement, as it is not repeated in the “Journal.”

This “Museum” was probably a newer book than the “Royal Primer,” “Battledore,” and “Pretty Book,” and consequently was more fully described; and oddly enough, all of these books are of earlier editions than Mr. Welsh, Newbery’s biographer, was able to trace in England.

“The Museum” still clings to the same idea which pervaded “The Play-thing.” Its second title reads: “A private Tutor for little Masters and Misses.” The contents show that this purpose was carried out. It tutored them by giving directions for reading with eloquence and propriety; by presenting “the antient and present State of Great Britain with a compendious History of England;” by instructing them in “the Solar System, geography, Arts and Sciences” and the inevitable “Rules for Behaviour, Religion and Morality;” and it admonished them by giving the “Dying Words of Great Men when just quitting the Stage of Life.” As a museum it included descriptions of the Seven Wonders of the World, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Churchyard, and the Tower of London, with an ethnological section in the geographical department! All of this amusement was to be had for the price of “One Shilling,” neatly bound, with, thrown in as good measure, “Letters, Tales and Fables illustrated with Cuts.” Such a library, complete in itself, was a fine and most welcome reward for scholarship, when prizes were awarded at the end of the school session.

Importations of “Parcels of entertaining books for children” had earlier in the year been announced through the columns of the “Gazette;” but these importations, though they show familiarity with Newbery’s quaint phraseology in advertising, probably also included an assortment of such little chap-books as “Tom Thumb,” “Cinderella” (from the French of Monsieur Perrault), and some few other old stories which the children had long since appropriated as their own property.

In 1751 we find New York waking up to the appreciation of children’s books. There J. Waddell and James Parker were apparently the pioneers in bringing to public notice the fact that they had for sale little novel-books in addition to horn-books and primers; and moreover the “Weekly Post-Boy” advertised that these booksellers had “Pretty Books for little Masters and Misses” (clearly a Newbery imitation), “with Blank Flourished Christmas pieces for Scholars.”

But as yet even Franklin had hardly been convinced that the old way of imparting knowledge was not superior to the then modern combination of amusement and instruction; therefore, although with his partner, David Hall, he without doubt sold such children’s books as were available, for his daughter Sally, aged seven, he had other views. At his request his wife, in December, 1751, wrote the following letter to William Strahan:

Little Sally Franklin could not have needed eight dozen copies of Aesop’s Fables, nor four Ainsworth’s Dictionaries, so it is probable that Deborah Franklin’s far from ready pen put down the book order for the spring, and that Sally herself was only to be supplied with the “Perceptor,” the “Fables,” and the “one good Quarto Bibel.”

As far as it is now possible to judge, the people of the towns soon learned the value of Newbery’s little nursery tales, and after seventeen hundred and fifty-five, when most of his books were written and published, they rapidly gained a place on the family book-shelves in America.

By seventeen hundred and sixty Hugh Gaine, printer, publisher, patent medicine seller, and employment agent for New York, was importing practically all the Englishman’s juvenile publications then for sale. At the “Bible and Crown,” where Gaine printed the “Weekly Mercury,” could be bought, wholesale and retail, such books as, “Poems for Children Three Feet High,” “Tommy Trapwit,” “Trip’s Book of Pictures,” “The New Year’s Gift,” “The Christmas Box,” etc.

Gaine himself was a prominent printer in New York in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Until the Revolution his shop was a favorite one and well patronized. But when the hostilities began, the condition of his pocket seems to have regulated his sympathies, and he was by turn Whig and Tory according to the possession of New York by so-called Rebels, or King’s Servants. When the British army evacuated New York, Gaine, wishing to keep up his trade, dropped the “Crown” from his sign. Among the enthusiastic patriots this ruse had scant success. In Freneau’s political satire of the bookseller, the first verse gives a strong suggestion of the ridicule to follow:

A contemporary of, and rival bookseller to, Gaine in seventeen hundred and sixty was James Rivington. Mr. Hildeburn has given Rivington a rather unenviable reputation; still, as he occasionally printed(?) a child’s book, Mr. Hildeburn’s remarks are quoted:

“Until the advent of Rivington it was generally possible to tell from an American Bookseller’s advertisement in the current newspapers whether the work offered for sale was printed in America or England. But the books he received in every fresh invoice from London were ‘just published by James Rivington’ and this form was speedily adopted by other booksellers, so that after 1761 the advertisement of books is no longer a guide to the issues of the colonial press.”

Although Rivington did not set up a press until about seventeen hundred and seventy-three,—according to Mr. Hildeburn,—he had a book-shop much earlier. Here he probably reprinted the title-page and then put an elaborate notice in the “Weekly Mercury” for November 17, 1760, as follows:

From such records of parents’ care as are given in Mrs. Charles Pinckney’s letters to her husband’s agent in London, and Josiah Quincy’s reminiscences of his early training, it seems very evident that John Locke’s advice in “Thoughts on Education” was read and followed at this time in the American colonies. Therefore, in accordance with the bachelor philosopher’s theory as to reading-matter for little children, the bookseller recommended the “Fables” to “those concerned in the education of children.” It is at least a happy coincidence that one of the earliest books (as far as is known to the writer), aside from school and religious books, issued as published in America for children, should have been the one Locke had so heartily recommended. This is what he had said many years previously: “When by these gentle ways he begins to read, some easy pleasant Book, suited to his capacities, should be put into his Hands, wherein the Entertainment that he finds might draw him on, and reward his Pains in Reading, and yet not such as will fill his head with perfectly useless Trumpery, or lay the Principles of Vice and Folly. To this Purpose, I think Aesop’s Fables the best which being Stories apt to delight and entertain a child, may yet afford useful Reflections to a grown Man.... If his Aesop has pictures in it, it will entertain him much better and encourage him to read.” The two hundred pictures in Rivington’s edition made it, of course, high priced in comparison with Newbery’s books: but New York then contained many families well able to afford this outlay to secure such an acquisition to the family library.

Hugh Gaine at this time, as a rule, received each year two shipments of books, among which were usually some for children, yet about 1762 he began to try his own hand at reprinting Newbery’s now famous little duodecimos.

In that year we find an announcement through the “New York Mercury” that he had himself printed “Divers diverting books for infants.” The following list gives some idea of their character:

The title of “Food for the Mind” is of special importance, since in it Gaine made a clever alteration by inserting the words “Good Boys and Girls in America.” The colonials were already beginning to feel a pride in the fact of belonging to the new country, America, and therefore Gaine shrewdly changed the English title to one more likely to induce people to purchase.

Gaine and Rivington alone have left records of printing children’s story-books in the town of New York before the Revolution; but before they began to print, other booksellers advertised their invoices of books. In 1759 Garrat Noel, a Dutchman, had announced that he had “the very prettiest gilt Books for little Masters and Misses that ever were invented, full of wit and wisdom, at the surprising low Price of only one Shilling each finely bound and adorned with a number of curious Cuts.” By 1762 Noel had increased his stock and placed a somewhat larger advertisement in the “Mercury” of December 27. The late arrival of his goods may have been responsible for the bargains he offered at this holiday sale.

To-day none of these gay little volumes sold in New York are to be seen. The inherent faculty of children for losing and destroying books, coupled with the perishable nature of these toy volumes, has rendered the children’s treasures of seventeen hundred and sixty-two a great rarity. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is the fortunate possessor of one much prized story-book printed in that year; but though it is at present in the Quaker City, a printer of Boston was responsible for its production.

In Isaiah Thomas’s recollections of the early Boston printers, he described Zechariah Fowle, with whom he served his apprenticeship, and Samuel Draper, Fowle’s partner. These men, about seventeen hundred and fifty-seven, took a house in Marlborough Street. Here, according to Thomas, “they printed and opened a shop. They kept a great supply of ballads, and small pamphlets for book pedlars, of whom there were many at that time. Fowle was bred to the business, but he was an indifferent hand at the press, and much worse at the case.”

This description of the printer’s ability is borne out by the “New-Gift for Children,” printed by this firm. It is probably the oldest story-book bearing an American imprint now in existence, and for this reason merits description, although its contents can be seen in the picture of the title-page. Brown with age and like all chap-books without a cover—for it was Newbery who introduced this more durable and attractive feature—all sizes in type were used to print its fifteen stories. The stories in themselves were not new, as it is called the “Fourth edition.” It is possible that they were taken from the Banbury chap-books, which also often copied Newbery’s juvenile library, as the list of his publications compiled by Mr. Charles Welsh does not contain this title.

The loyalty of the Boston printers found expression on the third page by a very black cut of King George the Third, who appears rather puzzled and not a little unhappy; but it found favor with customers, for as yet the colonials thought their king “no man of blood.” On turning the page Queen Charlotte looks out with goggle-eyes, curls, and a row of beads about the size of pebbles around her thick neck. The picture seems to be a copy from some miniature of the queen, as an oval frame with a crown surmounting it encircles the portrait. The stories are so much better than some that were written even after the nineteenth century, that extracts from them are worth reading. The third tale, called “The Generosity of Confessing a Fault,” begins as follows:

“Miss Fanny Goodwill was one of the prettiest children that ever was seen; her temper was as sweet as her looks, and her behavior so genteel and obliging that everybody admir’d her; for nobody can help loving good children, any more than they can help being angry with those that are naughty. It is no wonder then that her papa and mama lov’d her dearly, they took a great deal of pains to improve her mind so that before she was seven years old, she could read, and talk, and work like a little woman. One day as her papa was sitting by the fire, he set her upon his knees, kiss’d her, and told her how very much he lov’d her; and then smiling, and taking hold of her hand, My dear Fanny, said he, take care never to tell a lye, and then I shall always love you as well as I do now. You or I may be guilty of a fault; but there is something noble and generous in owning our errors, and striving to mend them; but a lye more than doubles the fault, and when it is found out, makes the lyar appear mean and contemptible.... Thus, my dear, the lyar is a wretch, whom nobody trusts, nobody regards, nobody pities. Indeed papa, said Miss Fanny, I would not be such a creature for all the world. You are very good, my little charmer, said her papa and kiss’d her again.”

The inevitable temptation came when Miss Fanny went on “a visit to a Miss in the neighborhood; her mama ordered her to be home at eight o’clock; but she was engag’d at play, and did not mind how the time pass’d, so that she stay’d till near ten; and then her mama sent for her.” The child of course was frightened by the lateness of the hour, and the maid—who appears in the illustration with cocked hat and musket!—tried to calm her fears with the advice to “tell her mama that the Miss she went to see had taken her out.” “No Mary, said Miss Fanny, wiping her pretty eyes, I am above a lye;” and she rehearsed for the benefit of the maid her father’s admonition.

Story IX tells of the Good Girl and Pretty Girl. In this the pretty child had bright eyes and pretty plump cheeks and was much admired. She, however, was a meanly proud girl, and so naughty as not to want to grow wiser, but applied to those good people who happened to be less favored in looks such terms as “bandy-legs, crump, and all such naughty names.” The good sister “could read before the pretty miss could tell a letter; and though her shape was not so genteel her behavior was a great deal more so. But alas! the pretty creature fell sick of the small-pox, and all her beauty vanished.” Thus in the eighteenth century was the adage “Beauty is but skin deep” brought to bear upon conduct.

On the last page is a cut of “Louisburg demolished,” which had served its time already upon almanacs, but the eight cuts were undoubtedly made especially for children. Moreover, since they do not altogether illustrate the various stories, they are good proof that similar chap-book tales were printed by Fowle and Draper for little ones before the War of Independence.

In the southern provinces the sea afforded better transportation facilities for household necessities and luxuries than the few post-lines from the north could offer. Bills of exchange could be drawn against London, to be paid by the profits of the tobacco crops, a safer method of payment than any that then existed between the northern and southern towns. In the regular orders sent by George Washington to Robert Carey in London, twice we find mention of the children’s needs and wishes. In the very first invoice of goods to be shipped to Washington after his marriage with Mrs. Custis in seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, he ordered “10 Shillings worth of Toys, 6 little books for children beginning to read and a fashionable dressed baby to cost 10 Shillings;” and again later in ordering clothes, “Toys, Sugar, Images and Comfits” for his step-children he added: “Books according to the enclosed list to be charged equally to John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis.”

But in Boston the people bought directly from the booksellers, of whom there were already many. One of these was John Mein, who played a part in the historic Non-Importation Agreement. In seventeen hundred and fifty this Englishman had opened in King Street a shop which he called the “London Book-Store.” Here he sold many imported books, and in seventeen hundred and sixty-five, when the population of Boston numbered some twenty thousand, he started the “earliest circulating library, advertised to contain ten thousand volumes.”73-* This shop was both famous and notorious: famous because of its “Very Grand Assortment of the most modern Books;” notorious because of the accusations made against its owner when the colonials, aroused by the action of Parliament, passed the Non-Importation Agreement.

Before the excitement had culminated in this “Agreement,” John Mein’s lists of importations show that the children’s pleasure had not been forgotten, and after it their books singularly enough were connected with this historic action.

In 1766, in the “Boston Evening Post,” we find Mein’s announcement that “Little Books with Pictures for Children” could be purchased at the London Book-Store; in December, 1767, he advertised through the columns of the “Boston Chronicle,” among other books, “in every branch of polite literature,” a “Great Variety of entertaining Books for Children, proper for presents at Christmas or New-year’s day—Prices from Two Coppers to Two Shillings.” In August of the following year Mein gave the names of seven of Newbery’s famous gilt volumes, as “to be sold” at his shop. These “pretty little entertaining and instructive Books” were “Giles Gingerbread,” the “Adventures of little Tommy Trip with his dog Jouler,” “Tommy Trip’s Select Fables,” and “an excellent Pastoral Hymn,” “The Famous Tommy Thumb’s Little Story-Book,” “Leo, the Great Giant,” and “Urax, or the Fair Wanderer—price eight pence lawful money. A very interesting tale in which the protection of the Almighty is proved to be the first and chief support of the Female Sex.” Number seven in the list was the story of the “Cruel Giant Barbarico,” and it is one of this edition that is now among the rare Americana of the Boston Public Library. The imprint upon its title-page coincides with Isaiah Thomas’s statement that though “Fleming was not concerned with Mein in book-selling, several books were printed at their house for Mein.” Its date, 1768, would indicate that Mein had reproduced one of his importations to which allusion has already been made. The book in marbled covers, time-worn and faded now, was sold for only “six-pence lawful” when new, possibly because it lacked illustrations.

One year later, when the Non-Importation Agreement had passed and was rigorously enforced in the port of Boston, these same little books were advertised again in the “Chronicle” of December 4-7 under the large caption, Printed in America and to be sold by John Mein. Times had so changed within one year’s space that even a child’s six-penny book was unpopular, if known to have been imported.

Mein was among those accused of violating the “Agreement;” he was charged with the importation of materials for book-making. In a November number of the “Chronicle” of seventeen hundred and sixty-nine, Mein published an article entitled “A State of the Importation from Great Britain into the Port of Boston with the advertisement of a set of Men, who assume to themselves The Title of ALL the Well Disposed Merchants.” In this letter the London Book-Store proprietor vigorously defended himself, and protested that the quantity of his work necessitated some importations not procurable in Boston. He also made sarcastic references to other men whom he thought the cap fitted better with less excuse. It was in the following December that he tried to keep this trade in children’s books by his apparently patriotic announcement regarding them. His protests were useless. Already in disfavor with some because he was supposed to print books in America but used a London imprint, his popularity waned; he was marked as a loyalist, and there was little of the spirit of tolerance for such in that hot-bed of patriotism. The air was so full of the growing differences between the colonials and the king’s government, that in seventeen hundred and seventy Mein closed out his stock and returned to England.

On the other hand, the patriotic booksellers did not fail to take note of the crystallization of public opinion. Robert Bell in Philadelphia appended a note to his catalogue of books, stating that “The Lovers and Practisers of Patriotism are requested to note that all the Books in this Catalogue are either of American manufacture, or imported before the Non-Importation Agreement.”

The supply of home-made paper was of course limited. So much was needed to circulate among the colonies pamphlets dealing with the injustice of the king’s government toward his American subjects, that it seems remarkable that any juvenile books should have been printed in those stirring days before the war began. It is rather to be expected that, with the serious turn that events had taken and the consequent questions that had arisen, the publications of the American press should have received the shadow of the forthcoming trouble—a shadow sufficient to discourage any attempt at humor for adult or child. Evidence, however, points to the fact that humor and amusement were not totally lacking in the issues of the press of at least one printer in Boston, John Boyle. The humorous satire produced by his press in seventeen hundred and seventy-five, called “The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times,” purported to set forth the state of political affairs during the troubles “wherein all our calamities are seen to flow from the fact that the king had set up for our worship the god of the heathen—The Tea Chest.” This pamphlet has been one to keep the name of John Boyle among the prominent printers of pre-Revolutionary days. Additional interest accrues for this reason to a play-book printed by Boyle—the only one extant of this decade known to the writer.

This quaint little chap-book, three by four inches in size, was issued in seventeen hundred and seventy-one, soon after Boyle had set up his printing establishment and four years before the publication of the famous pamphlet. It represents fully the standard for children’s literature in the days when Newbery’s tiny classics were making their way to America, and was indeed advertised by Mein in seventeen hundred and sixty-eight among the list of books “Printed in America.” Its title, “The Famous Tommy Thumb’s Little Story-Book: Containing his Life and Adventures,” has rather a familiar sound, but its contents would not now be allowed upon any nursery table. Since the days of the Anglo-Saxons, Tom Thumb’s adventures have been told and retold; each generation has given to the rising generation the version thought proper for the ears of children. In Boyle’s edition this method resulted in realism pushed to the extreme; but it is not to be denied that the yellowed pages contain the wondrous adventures and hairbreadth escapes so dear to the small boy of all time. The thrilling incidents were further enlivened, moreover, by cuts called by the printer “curious” in the sense of very fine: and curious they are to-day because of the crudeness of their execution and the coarseness of their design. Nevertheless, the grotesque character of the illustrations was altogether effective in impressing upon the reader the doughty deeds of his old friend, Tom Thumb. The book itself shows marks of its popularity, and of the hard usage to which it was subjected by its happy owner, who was not critical of the editor’s freedom of speech.

The coarseness permitted in a nursery favorite makes it sufficiently clear that the standard for the ideal toy-book of the eighteenth century is no gauge for that of the twentieth. Child-life differed in many particulars, as Mr. Julian Hawthorne pointed out some years ago, when he wrote that the children of the eighteenth century “were urged to grow up almost before they were short-coated.” We must bear this in mind in turning to another class of books popular with adult and child alike in both England and America before and for some years after the Revolution.

This was the period when the novel in the hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett was assuming hitherto unsuspected possibilities. Allusion must be made to some of the characteristics of their work, since their style undoubtedly affected juvenile reading and the tales written for children.

Taking for the sake of convenience the novels of the earliest of this group of men, Samuel Richardson, as a starting-point, we find in Pamela and Mr. Lovelace types of character that merge from the Puritanical concrete examples of virtue and vice into a psychological attempt to depict the emotion and feeling preceding every act of heroine and villain. Through every stage of the story the author still clings to the long-established precedent of giving moral and religious instruction. Afterwards, when Fielding attempted to parody “Pamela,” he developed the novel of adventure in high and low life, and produced “Joseph Andrews.” He then followed this with the character-study represented by “Tom Jones, Foundling.” Richardson in “Pamela” had aimed to emphasize virtue as in the end prospering; Fielding’s characters rather embody the principle of virtue being its own reward and of vice bringing its own punishment. Smollett in “Humphrey Clinker’s Adventures” brought forth fun from English surroundings instead of seeking for the hero thrilling and daring deeds in foreign countries. He also added to the list of character-studies “Roderick Random,” a tale of the sea, the mystery of which has never palled since “Robinson Crusoe” saw light.

There was also the novel of letters. In the age of the first great novelists letter-writing was among the polite arts. It was therefore counted a great but natural achievement when the epistolary method of revealing the plot was introduced. “Clarissa Harlowe” and “Sir Charles Grandison” were the results of this style of writing; they comprehended the “most Important Concerns of private life”—“concerns” which moved with lingering and emotional persistency towards the inevitable catastrophe in “Clarissa,” and the happy issue out of the misunderstandings and misadventures which resulted in Miss Byron’s alliance with Sir Charles.

Until after the next (nineteenth) century had passed its first decade these tales were read in full or abridged forms by many children among the fashionable and literary sets in England and America. Indeed, the art of writing for children was so unknown that often attempts to produce child-like “histories” for them resulted in little other than novels upon an abridged scale.

But before even abridged novels found their way into juvenile favor, it was “customary in Richardson’s time to read his novels aloud in the family circle. When some pathetic passage was reached the members of the family would retire to separate apartments to weep; and after composing themselves, they would return to the fireside to have the reading proceed. It was reported to Richardson, that, on one of these occasions, ‘an amiable little boy sobbed as if his sides would burst and resolved to mind his books that he might be able to read Pamela through without stopping.’ That there might be something in the family novel expressly for children, Richardson sometimes stepped aside from the main narrative to tell them a moral tale.”80-*

Mr. Cross gives an example of this which, shorn of its decoration, was the tale of two little boys and two little girls, who never told fibs, who were never rude and noisy, mischievous or quarrelsome; who always said their prayers when going to bed, and therefore became fine ladies and gentlemen.

To make the tales less difficult for amiable children to read, an abridgment of their contents was undertaken; and Goldsmith is said to have done much of the “cutting” in “Pamela,” “Clarissa Harlowe,” “Sir Charles Grandison,” and others. These books were included in the lists of those sent to America for juvenile reading. In Boston, Cox and Berry inserted in the “Boston Gazette and Country Journal” a notice that they had the “following little Books for all good Boys and Girls:

Up to this time the story has been rather of the books read by the Puritan and Quaker population of the colonies. There had arisen during the first half of the eighteenth century, however, a merchant class which owed its prosperity to its own ability. Such men sought for their families the material results of wealth which only a place like Boston could bestow. Many children, therefore, were sent to this town to acquire suitable education in books, accomplishments, and deportment. A highly interesting record of a child of well-to-do parents has been left by Anna Green Winslow, who came to Boston to stay with an aunt for the winters of 1771 and 1772. Her diary gives delightful glimpses of children’s tea-parties, fashions, and schools, all put down with a childish disregard of importance or connection. It is in these jottings of daily occurrences that proof is found that so young a girl read, quite as a matter of course, the abridged works of Fielding and Richardson.

On January 1, 1772, she wrote in her diary, “a Happy New Year, I have bestowed no new year’s gifts, as yet. But have received one very handsome one, Viz, the History of Joseph Andrews abreviated. In nice Guilt and Flowers covers.” Again, she put down an account of a day’s work, which she called “a piecemeal for in the first place I sew’d on the bosom of unkle’s shirt, and mended two pairs of gloves, mended for the wash two handkerch’fs, (one cambrick) sewed on half a border of a lawn apron of aunt’s, read part of the xxist chapter of Exodous, & a story in the Mother’s Gift.” Later she jotted in her book the loan of “3 of Cousin Charles’ books to read, viz.—The puzzling Cap, the female Orators & the history of Gaffer Two Shoes.” Little Miss Winslow, though only eleven years of age, was a typical child of the educated class in Boston, and, according to her journal, also followed the English custom of reading aloud “with Miss Winslow, the Generous Inconstant and Sir Charles Grandison.” It is to be regretted that her diary gives no information as to how she liked such tales. We must anticipate some years to find a comment in the Commonplace Book of a Connecticut girl. Lucy Sheldon lived in Litchfield, a thriving town in eighteen hundred, and did much reading for a child in those days. Upon “Sir Charles Grandison” she confided to her book this offhand note: “Read in little Grandison, which shows that, virtue always meets its reward and vice is punished.” The item is very suggestive of Goldsmith’s success in producing an abridgment that left the moral where it could not be overlooked.

To discuss in detail this class of writings is not necessary, but a glance at the story of “Clarissa” gives an instructive impression of what old-fashioned children found zestful.

“Clarissa Harlowe” in its abridged form was first published by Newbery, Senior. The book that lies before the writer was printed in seventeen hundred and seventy-two by his son, Francis Newbery. In size five by three and one-half inches, it is decked in once gay parti-colored heavy Dutch paper, with a delicate gold tracery over all. This paper binding, called by Anna Winslow “Flowery Guilt,” can no longer be found in Holland, the place of its manufacture; with sarsinet and other fascinating materials it has vanished so completely that it exists only on the faded bindings of such small books as “Clarissa.”

The narrative itself is compressed from the original seven volumes into one volume of one hundred and seventy-six closely printed pages, with several full-page copper-plate illustrations. The plot, however, gains rather than loses in this condensed form. The principal distressing situations follow so fast one upon the other that the intensity of the various episodes in the affecting history is increased by the total absence of all the “moving” letters found in the original work. The “lordly husband and father,” “the imperious son,” “the proud ambitious sister, Arabella,” all combined to force the universally beloved and unassuming Clarissa to marry the wealthy Mr. Somers, who was to be the means of “the aggrandisement of the family.” Clarissa, in this perplexing situation, yielded in a desperate mood to “the earnest entreaties of the artful Lovelace to accept the protection of the Ladies of his family.” Who these ladies were, to whom the designing Lovelace conducted the agitated heroine, is set forth in unmistakable language; and thereafter follow the treacherous behaviour exhibited by Lovelace, the various attempts to escape by the unhappy beauty, and her final exhaustion and death. An example of the style may be given in this description of the death-scene:

“Clarissa had before remarked that all would be most conveniently over in bed: The solemn, the most important moment approached, but her soul ardently aspiring after immorality [immortality was of course the author’s intention], she imagined the time moved slowly; and with great presence of mind, she gave orders in relation to her body, directing her nurse and the maid of the house, as soon as she was cold, to put her into her coffin. The Colonel [her cousin], after paying her another visit, wrote to her uncle, Mr. John Harlowe, that they might save themselves the trouble of having any further debates about reconciliation; for before they could resolve, his dear cousin would probably be no more....

“A day or two after, Mr. Belford [a friend] was sent for, and immediately came; at his entrance he saw the Colonel kneeling by her bed-side with the ladies right hand in both his, which his face covered bathing it with tears, though she had just been endeavoring to comfort him, in noble and elevated strains. On the opposite side of the bed was seated Mrs. Lovick, who leaning against the bed’s-head in a most disconsolate manner, turned to him as soon as she saw him, crying, O Mr. Belford, the dear lady! a heavy sigh not permitting her to say more. Mrs. Smith [the landlady] was kneeling at the bed’s feet with clasped fingers and uplifted eyes, with tears trickling in large drops from her cheeks, as if imploring help from the source of all comfort.

“The excellent lady had been silent a few minutes, and was thought speechless, she moving her lips without uttering a word; but when Mrs. Lovick, on Mr. Belford’s approach, pronounced his name, O Mr. Belford! cried she, in a faint inward voice, Now!—now!—I bless God, all will soon be over—a few minutes will end this strife—and I shall be happy,” etc. Her speech was long, although broken by dashes, and again she resumed, “in a more faint and broken accent,” the blessing and directions. “She then sunk her head upon the pillow; and fainting away, drew from them her hands.” Once more she returned to consciousness, “when waving her hand to him [Mr. Belford] and to her cousin, and bowing her head to every one present, not omitting the nurse and maid servant, with a faltering and inward voice, she added Bless—Bless—you all!—”

The illustrations, in comparison with others of the time, are very well engraved, although the choice of subjects is somewhat singular. The last one represents Clarissa’s friend, “Miss Howe” (the loyal friend to whom all the absent letters were addressed), “lamenting over the corpse of Clarissa,” who lies in the coffin ordered by the heroine “to be covered with fine black cloth, and lined with white satin.”

As one lays aside this faded duodecimo, the conviction is strong that the texture of the life of an old-fashioned child was of coarser weave than is pleasant to contemplate. How else could elders and guardians have placed without scruple such books in the hands of children? The one explanation is to be found in such diaries as that of Anna Winslow, who quaintly put down in her book facts and occurrences denoting the maturity already reached by a little miss of eleven.